The present invention generally relates to area filling methods, and more particularly to an area filling method which develops a binary graphic having a contour thereof described by direction codes into a raster graphic and fills the inside of the raster graphic.
When developing a binary graphic which has the contour thereof described by direction codes into an original graphic and filling the inside of the original graphic, the binary graphic is generally developed into a raster graphic prior to the area filling.
However, a conventional area filling method regards a distance from one black picture element to a next black picture element as one segment and fills this segment by a raster scan. For this reason, it is impossible to carry out the area filling with respect to a segment having a width of one picture element. Accordingly, the areas which are to be filled must first be categorized into the segments having the width of one picture element and the segments having a width greater than one picture element, and the area filling is separately carried out with respect to the two kinds of segments. The area filling is completed by taking a logical sum (OR) of the results of the area filling which is carried out with respect to the two kinds of segments. But according to this conventional area filling method, there is a need to categorize the areas into two kinds after the binary graphic is developed into the raster graphic. As a result, there are problems in that the area filling process is complex because of the need to independently process the two kinds of areas and the area filling process cannot be carried out at a high speed.